R Good’s Susie, A Show Bike in Disguise

The Lost File, Volume 1

I have gone to a lot of bike events, and shot a lot of custom motorcycles at these events. Most of these motorcycles had a magazine that they were headed for, but some get shot on a whim, and never published. Some are even worse, in that I’ve lost the owners/builders information, so I can’t even get in touch with them. As you might guess, situations like these make the bike/photography in question even less desirable to magazines, so the photos just waste away in the digital Neverneverland of one of my archive hard drives.

But all is not lost. There’s always the Internet.

There’s this concept called crowdsourcing which pits the denizens of the web against their myriad of contacts, and makes needles in haystacks extremely findable. In other words, chances are somebody, somewhere will know who owns these bikes and how to get in touch with them. So shoot us a line or a comment if you know.

This first in the series was spotted at Sturgis in 06. I was shooting some bikes from noted builder Steve Jones of Jonz Customs, and he showed this one to me, by his painter, R Good. Well, long story short, I never got a spec sheet on the bike and Steve moved, so I’m not even in touch with him any longer. I’ve picked up some references to R Good in Google searches, but no contact number. All I know is that the dude is from Denver, Colorado.

The bike itself was only borderline magazine quality on the attention-getting side, but is a well put-together and cool little old-school rigid with good detail work. At its heart is a Harley-Davidson Evolution “crate motor,” at $3999 its one of the best bargains in motorcycling, and a standard H-D five-speed transmission.

An H-D flatslide carb mixes the juices and might be capped with a Milwaukee Iron air cleaner, but I’m not sure. What I am sure of, is that the Vance and Hines shorty pipes fit the lines of this bike perfectly.

As you would expect on a bike owned by a painter, the coatings are flawless, but what you might not expect is how simple it is. Just basic black for the most part, but it’s the accents that make the bike, with pinstriping down the frame and forks, and tiny lettering on a few key parts. The gold leaf inlaid on the tank and around the bike is a nice touch from another era.

On a bike a standard looking as this you also wouldn’t expect the foot-clutch/jockey-shifter combo. Same goes for the Exile Sprotor that gives a good view of the 80-spoke wheel from the right hand side, it just seems out of place on a bike so… basic looking. But then who wants to ride around on a tarted-up garbage wagon five days a week? I’d ride this bike in a second (if it had rear shocks), and isn’t that what motorcycling is about?

Text and Photos by Billy Bartels